


The Dragon's Slumber

by NighttimePhilosopher



Category: Metroid Series
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Drabble, Gen, Gore, Ridley dies, set after the Super Metroid Ridley battle, that's what the major character death tag is for dw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 10:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15047078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NighttimePhilosopher/pseuds/NighttimePhilosopher
Summary: Samus isn't used to the way Ridley's body just lies there like that.





	The Dragon's Slumber

**Author's Note:**

> Ridley for smash 5 did something to me

The scales were impressive under the metal of her hand. In some places, they were hard and sturdy, an ugly, bonelike texture. And then so repulsively flexible in other sections, designed for the most agile and unexpected of movements. A bloodthirsty blade, sharpened by the accursed science of the Space Pirates from an already adept stone.

She’d kicked his jaw in. It hadn’t been what killed him, but it certainly put a dent in that awful grin.

Curved fangs and alien blood littered the cramped room. A crater smoked and sizzled quietly, bending what was left of that spindly ribcage unnaturally inwards. His shoulders sat stiff and paralysed, the skeletal blades resting awkwardly against the volcanic soil beneath him. His great, lethal claws splayed outwards, discontent with defeat, and to Samus, they still appeared ready to shear through armour and flesh with little margin to react.

It had been a timed blow to his ironically fragile heart that ended him. He’d taken many a Super missile from her canon without so much as a flinch, but sometimes things would never change. Weaknesses were permanent and exploitable, whether they were physical or emotional.

The pirate commander had heaved up his own thick, dark blood, jaw hanging uncouthly as he stumbled backwards. With one wing he attempted to right himself, but lacking the other affected his ability beyond the loss of flight. The beam that fired from Samus’s arm canon passed through his leg, tripping such a big creature over with nearly comical ease.

They both knew it had finally come. They knew that one day, one of them would not leave the battle. They knew that one day, one of them would collapse with exhaustion under the other. It was only a matter of time, each encounter a clock chime.

Samus knew what he thought of her, as a human under Chozo armour. He knew what he had taken from her, what he could use to stop her in her tracks, even if only for a moment. So she was surprised, as he lay wheezing and dying, that he laughed. The most ugly, distorted gurgle, but a laugh, nonetheless. Whatever existed of his lungs and vocal tract worked to produce a deep, gasping, sadistic cackle, despite his clear loss.

His eyes shone gold as he stared at her, choking on his own blood as he toyed with her one last time. She was stone, and the vibration could not shatter her to fragments like it used to. She should have expected this, should have expected a final effort from this cunning, death-evasive murderer. She especially knew that he loved seeing her on the defensive, hackles raised and canon aimed between his eyes.

‘Finish me’, he was taunting, testing. She could see it in the way his eyes flashed, sneering despite lacking a working mouth. He craved the challenge and the struggle, not just because his DNA screamed apex predator. He wanted a final rise from her. ‘You can’t do it, can you?’ He would’ve said.

‘You’re not worthy.’

She was worthy, incredibly so. She had every right to be the one to take his great life, to fire the last shot and end it. Anger had boiled within her, spurting and hissing and writhing, rising and trying to escape out her arm canon in the molten form of a devastating plasma beam. It showed in her stiffening, bristling form and she hated it. Despised it, because he _knew_. She would not let him win, but in many ways he already had.

Samus held her ground. Ridley choked and gasped for air that his body could not take in.

In his final moments, he did not look at her. He had shown something momentarily at her inaction, but surviving took place first and he forgot her presence, instead wheezing as his heart – on display through his shattered rib cage – fluttered to a stop. She’d seen him die too many times, but this was the first time he was experiencing _true_ death. There were no human remains to feed from, no cybernetic enhancements ready for his use, no Space Pirate medics with dirty, unpolished ways to revive him. He could not drag himself away from death this time.

He died there, right in front of her eyes. He stopped gurgling and writhing. His chest ceased to stutter, and his long, dagger-ended tail no longer flicked and jerked. His golden eyes dimmed to grey, switching off an ever-present light bulb. He was finally gone.

Minutes ticked by, and Samus did nothing. Much of her believed he was lying, that he’d swing his bony tail and knock her over, on her again in a second and flaring his leathery wings in triumph. She waited for a muscled leg to jerk, a spindly finger to twitch. She waited for him to cough, to snarl and growl at her, even with that broken jaw and severed lungs. She waited for those eyes to light up and burn with the flames of revenge.

But he did not. He was dead. She had killed him.

He wouldn’t flinch if she stomped on his limp tail. He wouldn’t growl if she kicked in his defenceless sides. He wouldn’t screech if her fist came crushing down on the thin tip of his snout.

He couldn’t hear her yells, her screams. He couldn’t feel the curses and cries directed at him, neither the physical assaults. He couldn’t see her tears, struggling to trickle down her face, struggling to stop.

She littered his room with him, and it rained with his seared scales.

He was gone and she was not. There was something beautiful and something ugly in that.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Riddles immediately blows up after death in Super Metroid but I wanted to not have him do that for max emoshes.


End file.
